Vince Vaughn Facts

16 Facts That Prove Vince Vaughn Is As Crazy As His 'True Detective' Character

If you’ve seen the past few weeks of True Detective, you know a few things about Vince Vaughn’s character Frank Semyon. You know that he lost millions to corrupt city manager Ben Caspere. You know that a rat bit his finger once. You know that he has blue balls in his heart, but has never even had a fucking cavity. You know that the whole internet has been making fun of his ridiculous dialogue.

But how much do you know about Vince Vaughn himself, other than that he was in Wedding Crashers? Because it turns out that VV’s real life contains only slightly fewer brawls, financial schemes, real estate deals, concealed weapons, failed projects, and ridiculous mobster lines than his True Detective life.

His mother was involved in a multimillion dollar fraud sting

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Vaughn’s mother Sharon was at one point one of the top money managers in the United States… until she fell for a scam that lost $23 million of her hedge fund’s money and $2 million of her own. But then, in a development that would make for a more interesting movie than some of the ones her son has made, she collaborated with investigators and secretly taped conversations to help set up arrests, indictments, and the money’s eventual recovery. (She still had to give up her investment industry license and pay $800,000, though).

Most of his family members also have V names

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After marrying a man named Vernon Vaughn, Sharon decided that everyone in their family should have VV initials — not just Vince and his sisters Valeria and Victoria, but also all the family pets, including a chihuahua named Vanadis. Although they named their son Vernon, Vince and his wife broke the streak by calling their daughter Locklyn, a name that disqualifies her from the VV club but does qualify her to be a character in the next hit series of Young Adult Fiction books.

He makes land purchases in real life

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Vaughn’s True Detective character Frank Semyon has become notorious among viewers for his obsession with his investment in a scheme to buy real estate in central California. Well, it turns out Vaughn, like all great actors, is drawing from personal experience here. Just as any thespian may find the passion for an onscreen declaration of “I love you” by thinking of their real-life partner, when Vince urgently whispers “my land purchases” on-screen, he is undoubtedly thinking of his real land purchases: a penthouse and a townhouse in Chicago, and a swath of Illinois farmland.

Steve Buscemi was stabbed protecting him in a barfight

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In April 2001, Buscemi and Vaughn were in North Carolina filming a movie called, fittingly, Domestic Disturbance. One night they and their screenwriter got into a bar brawl with two local men that led to Vaughn being arrested, Buscemi being stabbed in the head multiple times, and everybody being maced by the police. (The brawl was allegedly sparked by, what else, Vaughn talking to some guy’s girlfriend.) Buscemi intervened in the fight and was stabbed, and once the fight was stopped as his attacker was being cuffed the others started fighting again, leading to the mass macing and Vaughn being booked. Vaughn emerged from the incident with this mugshot, and was later banned from bars in the state. Buscemi got out of the ER with minor injuries and went on to star in numerous films, several successful TV projects, and various memes about how he looks weird.

He was working on a Brady Bunch reboot

Vaughn was signed on to develop, executive produce and star in a Brady Bunch reboot/sequel in which he would play a grown-up, divorced Bobby Brady with a Bunch of his own. CBS took the project to script in summer 2012, but nothing materialized from it and the network has seemingly moved on to creating a Bradystage show instead.

He made a reality show with Glenn Beck

In 2012 Vaughn teamed with conservative TV personality/fellow Libertarian blowhard Glenn Beck to produce a reality show. The 2013 show, Pursuit of the Truth, featured aspiring documentary filmmakers pitching an eclectic array of proposals to get funding from Beck and Vaughn’s respective production companies.

He loves Chicago and generously buys dinner for its enemies

A proud midwesterner and Chicagoan, Vaughn loves his city and especially his Blackhawks. During their latest Stanley Cup run Vaughn was a mainstay at their games and took on the role of city ambassador when he picked up the tab for a rival coach (the Tampa Bay Lightning’s Jon Cooper) and his party of 19. It was apparently Cooper who initially tried to pay for Vaughn’s dinner, but according to local news outlet WGN, Vince declared: “That’s not how we roll in Chicago […] This is Chicago, my town. This is how we treat people. I got his check.”

He auditioned for Friends

Vince Vaughn and his close friend Jon Favreau were among the original auditionees for Friends (there are conflicting accounts of whether he read for Joey or Chandler). Though they didn’t make the cast of the now-iconic sitcom, Favreau and Vaughn jump-started successful careers of their own when they made surprise hit Swingers in 1996. A decade later, Vaughn ended up dating his would-be co-star Jennifer Aniston; they got together, ironically, while filming The Break Up together.

He was Norman Bates in the ill-fated 90s remake of Psycho

With his career rolling after Swingers and Jurassic Park 2, Vaughn took on the role of villain Norman Bates in Gus Van Sant’s shot-for-shot remake of classic Hitchcock thriller Psycho. After the film bombed critically and disappointed financially, VV retreated from movies for two years.

His movies haven’t been profitable in half a decade

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While Vaughn’s post-Wedding Crashers glow led to a few holiday-themed moderate successes in the late 2000s (Fred Claus, 4 Christmases, Couples Retreat), for the past five years, Vaughn has been far from box-office gold. Based on the usual rule of thumb that a film has to double its production budget to be profitable, no major release starring Vaughn has been profitable since 2009. (Not surprising when you remember those films were The Dilemma, The Watch, The Internship, Delivery Man, and Unfinished Business.) Even VV himself lamented his string of “assembly-line comedies” in his recent British GQ interview, saying the decision to shift Internship from R to PG-13 partway through production “sucked the life right out.”

He loves guns and believes they should be in schools

Earlier this year Vaughn sparked controversy when he told GQ that he believes mass shootings should be combatted by allowing guns in schools, saying that banning guns to stop violence is like banning forks to stop obesity. His position drew criticism, but personally I open-carry a fork everywhere I go in case a lunch tries to not be eaten by me, and I believe any citizen should be allowed to tote a semi-automatic fork that allows them to maw down dozens of meals in a matter of seconds.